THURSDAY
15th JULY 2010
07.00hrs, An early start, as we leave Port Villa
today,
First things first, we took a chicken and a
couple of porksteaks out of the deep freeze for dinner tonight at
sea,
a light breakfast and off up to the supermarket for
some fresh fruit and veg, plus a few spuds.
09.00hrs, Patick and his merry men returned to " A
Lady"with the SSB, they took it away yesterday to see if they could fix the damn
thing,
Any way, they couldent get any reception so took it
away again and promised to return in 30 mins, ohhhhhhhh frig this, are we
going to be late for the start again at 12 noon.
?
10.00hrs Skipper and Scotty took the
boat up to the fuelling dock and loaded on 270 L of duty free diesel,and then
returned the boat
to its berth on the Quay wall.
11.30hrs, No sign of Patick or his merry men ,
blast them all, Here we are still on the dock and everyone else has left for the
starting area,
and we still have to get the rib on board once we
get clear of the dock.
11.45hrs Aileen is going around in circles praying
for the guys, and not for a happy death, then they come sauntering down
the
quay wall, not a frigging care in the world, the
langers, THE LANGERS,
They are wondering what all the fuss is, after all
, do we want a radio !
20 mins later they leave and we still dont know if
the thing works or not.... ohhhhhhhh its enough to do your head
in....
We let go our shore lines, and leave the berth,
then pull up the rib and strap it down , and motor out over the bar towards the
start line,
the fleet has already left and we are 25 minutes
late...Just bleedin lovely......
14.30hrs The wind is on the port beam,
blowing about 15 /20 knots and we are trucking along at 7 / 8 knots and have
caught
up with most of the fleet, Crazy horse, Ocean
Jasper and Choi are way out in front, at least 3 miles out there ,
15 30hrs We decided to put up our magnificent
KITE and show these guys that we mean buisness,
The main is also doing nicely without the top
batton, it certainly goes in and out much easier,
16.00hrs, The KITE is up and looking good, we
are purring on the deck,, ha,ha ,now we will show these guys a thing or
two.
Next thing, brrrriiiiiipppp
Oh shiiiiiiite, the magnificant KITE is not looking good any
more,Its in blooming shreds,
It ripped all across the top and was fluttering
nicely away in the breeze....oh my God , what next !
It must have been the little hole up by the
shoulders the caused this problem...
20 minutes later , we have the kite, mixed with
lots of Scotty's blood, bagged and the boat sailing under white sails
again. we lost a bit of ground there, ahh well, thats that.. But,
and there's always a but, We have another spinniker up under
the bow, we will take a look at that tomorrow.
19.30 We have the dinner, by skipper,
Roast stuffed chicken, roast spuds, creamed
potatoes cooked with some bay leaves, and cabbage cooked with pork fat,,
yummy
we also had strawberry and mint jelly , which was
delicious.
We also cookes the two stuffed porksteaks to have
cold for lunch tomorrow, We are back to eating our way round the world
again.
and the skipper doesent have " Fats " hogging the
galley all the time.
21.00hrs, we were all finished and wash up done,
Night watches
:- 21.00hrs /
00,00hrs Scotty
00.00hrs / 03.00hrs
Skipper
03.00hrs / 06,00hrs
Aileen
06.00hrs / 09.00hrs
Scotty
Thats it for now,
Signed :- Stephen
Hyde ( Skipper )